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"Jean-François Vernay makes the case in this book for a turn to cognitive Australian literary studies, both in Australian novels themselves and in the emergence of a "synergistic field of cognitive-inspired Australian literary scholarship". These are new, provocative ideas which offer unexpected ways of reading a wide range of Australian fiction from Markus Zusak to Frank Moorhouse, from Claire Coleman to Christos Tsiolkas, from Linda Jaivin to Helen Demidenko. The analyses are fully alert to the scopic and haptic pleasures books can provide, the effects of the "neurodiversity paradigm", the cognitive mechanisms generated by erotic themes, the interaction between mind and body in Indigenous fiction, the representation of rage in the works of "angry gay" writers, and the major public controversy caused by Demidenko’s novel."

David Carter, Emeritus Professor, FAHA, The University of Queensland, Australia.

"The understanding of what we humans get up to with each other, as members of our species and our cultures, has been the principal aspiration of both cognitive psychology and literary studies. Until very recently, however, these two disciplines have stayed rather far apart. In this timely monograph, Jean-François Vernay describes how they are at last approaching each other in mutually beneficial ways. This book shows how fiction and imagination are together coming into the centre of the neurocognitive enterprise."

Keith Oatley, Author of Our Minds, Our Selves: A Brief History of Psychology.

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